Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Confessions of an Ex-Internet Shill

Paul McCartney (left) vs. Faul (right)

When I first started trying to expose the fact that Beatle Paul had been replaced by an impostor, I was very naive. I honestly believed that when people were presented with the evidence, they would realize what had happened. I believed that when people were faced with facts such as changes in the bone and soft tissue structures of the face, differences in height, eye color, voice, personality, musical talent, etc., they would have no choice but to recognize that they had been duped by a double. I did not realize that there were agents on the Internet who were paid to thwart my every effort. Over time, this became obvious, as I have discussed in previous posts, such as

I have posted a confession of just such a shill below (lightly edited, posted at ATS). This person was paid to post pro-Israel arguments, but there are agents out there who are paid to spew pro-PIA propaganda. There are powerful, wealthy people out there who have a vested interest in keeping the Truth about what happened to James Paul McCartney a secret. Don’t be fooled by Faul. And don’t let their paid shills pull the wool over your eyes.

I am writing here to come out of the closet as a paid shill. For a little over six months, I was paid to spread disinformation and argue political points on the Internet...

I quit this job in the latter part of 2011, because I became disgusted with it, and with myself. I realized I couldn’t look myself in the mirror anymore. If this confession triggers some kind of retribution against me, so be it. Part of being a real man in this world is having real values that you stand up for, no matter what the consequences.

My story begins in early 2011. I had been out of work for almost a year after losing my last job in tech support. Increasingly desperate and despondent, I jumped at the chance when a former co-worker called me up and said she had a possible lead for me. “It is an unusual job, and one that requires secrecy. But the pay is good. And I know you are a good writer, so its something you are suited for.” (Writing has always been a hobby for me). She gave me only a phone-number and an address, in one of the seedier parts of San Francisco, where I live. intrigued, I asked her for the company’s URL and some more info. She laughed. “They don’t have a website. Or even a name. You’ll see. Just tell them I referred you.” Yes, it sounded suspicious, but long-term joblessness breeds desperation, and desperation has a funny way of overlooking the suspicious when it comes to putting food on the table.

The next day, I arrived at the address – the third floor in a crumbling building. The appearance of the place did not inspire confidence. After walking down a long, filthy linoleum-covered corridor lit by dimly-flickering halogen, I came to the entrance of the office itself: a crudely battered metal door with a sign that said “United Amalgamated Industries, Inc.” I later learned that this “company” changed its name almost monthly, always using bland names like that which gave no strong impression of what the company actually does. Not too hopeful, I went inside. The interior was equally shabby. There were a few long tables with folding chairs, at which about a dozen people were tapping away on old, beat-up computers. There were no decorations or ornaments of any type: not even the standard-issue office fica trees or plastic ferns. What a dump. Well, beggars can’t be choosers.

The manager, a balding man in his late forties, rose from the only stand-alone desk in the room and came forward with an easy smile. “You must be Chris. Yvette [my ex-co-worker] told me you’d be coming.” [Not our real names]. “Welcome. Let me tell you a little about what we do.” No interview, nothing. I later learned they took people based solely on referral, and that the people making the referrals, like my ex-colleague Yvette, were trained to pick out candidates based on several factors including ability to keep one’s mouth shut, basic writing skills, and desperation for work.

We sat down at his desk and he began by asking me a few questions about myself and my background, including my political views (which were basically non-existent). Then he began to explain the job. “We work on influencing people’s opinions here,” is how he described it. The company’s clients paid them to post on Internet message boards and popular chartrooms, as well as in gaming forums and social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Who were these clients? “Oh, various people,” he said vaguely. “Sometimes private companies, sometimes political groups.” Satisfied that my political views were not strong, he said I would be assigned to political work. “The best people for this type of job are people like you, without strong views,” he said with a laugh. “It might seem counterintuitive, but actually we’ve found that to be the case.” Well, OK. Fine. As long as it comes with a steady paycheck, I’d believe whatever they wanted me to believe, as the guy in Ghostbusters said.

After discussing pay (which was much better than I’d hoped) and a few other details, he then went over the need for absolute privacy and secrecy. “You can’t tell anyone what we do here. Not your wife, not your dog.” (I have neither, as it happens.) “We’ll give you a cover story and even a phone number and a fake website you can use. You will have to tell people you are a consultant. Since your background is in tech support, that will be your cover job. Is this going to be a problem for you?” I assured him it would not. “Well, OK. Shall we get started?”

“Right now?” I asked, a bit taken aback.

“No time like the present!” he said with a hearty laugh.

The rest of the day was taken up with training. Another staff member, a no-nonsense woman in her thirties, was to be my trainer, and training would only last two days. “You seem like a bright guy, you’ll get the hang of it pretty fast, I think,” she said. And indeed, the job was easier than I’d imagined. My task was simple: I would be assigned to four different websites, with the goal of entering certain discussions and promoting a certain view. I learned later that some of the personnel were assigned to internet message boards (like me), while others worked on Facebook or chatrooms. It seems these three types of media each have different strategy for shilling, and each shill concentrates on one of the three in particular.

My task? “To support Israel and counter anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic posters.” Fine with me. I had no opinions one way or another about Israel, and who likes anti-Semites and Nazis? Not me, anyway. But I didn’t know too much about the topic. “That’s OK,” she said. “You’ll pick it up as you go along. For the most part, at first, you will be doing what we call “meme-patrol.” This is pretty easy. Later if you show promise, we’ll train you for more complex arguments, where more in-depth knowledge is necessary.”

She handed me two binders with sheets enclosed in limp plastic. The first was labeled simply “Israel” in magic-marker on the cover, and it had two sections .The first section contained basic background info on the topic. I would have to read and memorize some of this, as time went on. It had internet links for further reading, essays and talking points, and excerpts from some history books. The second, and larger, section was called “Strat” (short for “strategy”) with long lists of “dialogue pairs.” These were specific responses to specific postings. If a poster wrote something close to “X,” we were supposed to respond with something close to “Y.” “You have to mix it up a bit, though,” said my trainer. “Otherwise it gets too obvious. Learn to use a thesaurus.” This section also contained a number of hints for de-railing conversations that went too far away from what we were attempting. These strategies included various forms of personal attacks, complaining to the forum moderators, smearing the characters of our opponents, using images and icons effectively, and even dragging the tone of the conversation down with sexual innuendo, links to pornography, or other such things. “Sometimes we have to fight dirty,” or trainer told us. “Our opponents don’t hesitate to, so we can’t either.”

The second binder was smaller, and it contained information specific to the web sites I would be assigned to. The sites I would work were: Godlike Productions, Lunatic Outpost, CNN news, Yahoo News, and a handful of smaller sites that rotated depending on need. As stated, I was NOT assigned to work ATS (although others in my group were), which is part of the reason I am posting this here, rather than elsewhere. I wanted to post this on Godlike Productions at first, but they have banned me from even viewing that site for some reason (perhaps they are onto me?). But if somebody connected with this site can get the message to them, I think they should know about it, because that was the site I spent a good 70% of my time working on.

The site-specific info in the second binder included a brief history each site, including recent flame-wars, as well as info on what to avoid on each site so as not to get banned. It also had quite detailed info on the moderators and the most popular regged posters on each site: location (if known), personality type, topics of interest, background sketch, and even some notes on how to “push the psychological buttons” of different posters. Although I didn’t work for ATS, I did see they had a lot of info on your so-called “WATS” posters here (the ones with gold borders around their edges). “Focus on the popular posters,” my trainer told me. “These are the influential ones. Each of these is worth 50 to 100 of the lesser known names.” Each popular poster was classified as “hostile,” “friendly,” or “indifferent” to my goal. We were supposed to cultivate friendship with the friendly posters as well as the mods (basically, by brownnosing and sucking up), and there were even notes on strategies for dealing with specific hostile posters. The info was pretty detailed, but not perfect in every case. “If you can convert one of the hostile posters from the enemy side to our side, you get a nice bonus. But this doesn’t happen too often, sadly. So mostly you’ll be attacking them and trying to smear them.”

At first, like I said, my job was “meme-patrol.” This was pretty simple and repetitive; it involved countering memes and introducing new memes, and didn’t demand much in-depth knowledge of the subject. Mostly just repetitive posting based on the dialogue pairs in the “Strat” section of the first binder. A lot of my job was de-railing and spamming threads that didn’t go our way, or making accusations of racism and anti-Semitism. Sometimes I had to simply lie and claim a poster said something or did something “in another thread” they really hadn’t said or done I felt bad about this…but in the end I felt worse about the possibility of losing the first job I’d been able to get since losing my “real” job.

The funny thing was, although I started the job with no strong opinions or political views, after a few weeks of this I became very emotionally wedded to the pro-Israel ideas I was pushing. There must be some psychological factor at work…a good salesman learns to honestly love the products he’s selling, I guess. It wasn’t long before my responses became fiery and passionate, and I began to learn more about the topic on my own. “This is a good sign,” my trainer told me. “It means you are ready for the next step: complex debate.”

The “complex debate” part of the job involved a fair amount of additional training, including memorizing more specific information about the specific posters (friendly and hostile) I’d be sparring with. Here, too, there were scripts and suggested lines of argument, but we were given more freedom. There were a lot of details to this more advanced stage of the job – everything from how to select the right avatar to how to use “demotivationals” (humorous images with black borders that one finds floating around the web). Even the proper use of images of cats was discussed. Sometimes we used faked or photo-shopped images or doctored news reports (something else that bothered me).

I was also given the job of tying to find new recruits, people “like me” who had the personality type, ability to keep a secret, basic writing/thinking skills, and desperation necessary to sign on a shill. I was less successful at this part of the job, though, and I couldn’t find another in the time I was there.

After a while of doing this, I started to feel bad. Not because of the views I was pushing (as I said, I was first apolitical, then pro-Israel), but because of the dishonesty involved. If my arguments were so correct, I wondered, why did we have to do this in the first place? Shouldn’t truth propagate itself naturally, rather than through, well…propaganda? And who was behind this whole operation, anyway? Who was signing my paychecks? The stress of lying to my parents and friends about being a “consultant” was also getting to me. Finally, I said enough was enough. I quit in September 2011. Since then I’ve been working a series of unglamorous temp office jobs for lower pay. But at least I’m not making my living lying and heckling people who come online to express their views and exercise freedom of speech.

A few days ago I happened to be in the same neighborhood and on a whim thought I’d check out the old office. It turns out the operation is gone, having moved on. This, too, I understood, is part of their strategy: Don’t stay in the same place for too long, don’t keep the same name too long, move on after half a year or so. Keeping a low profile, finding new employees through word of mouth: All this is part of the shill way of life. But it is a deceptive way of life, and no matter how noble the goals (I remain pro-Israel, by the way), these sleazy means cannot be justified by the end.

This is my confession. ... Shills exist. They are real. They walk among you...

Wow, this exact post was also found on Abovetopsecret.comI believe that ACT of this "coming out of the closet" is also the mediocre work of a shill. A man's self-respect would be immediately compromised with the acceptance of such a "job".

Hi. Well, is not a surprise the existence of these kind of jobs. Sometimes they're so obvious and I'm not even looking for them, you can detect them because of the way they show their "ideas". If you read their posts you could notice that their ideas are not the result of their own thougts. If people are paid for making good opinion posts about a product or hiding publicity on a forum/blog comment. The kind of job the article describes is plausible, of course. Even if the article itself is not real.

You guys haven't seen shills till you have seen the Anti-White shills! The idea is to hammer Whites for everything from Genocides to Slavery and dispirit them as much as possible. The logic doesn't have to be sound, just spray hate and misinformation is enough to hijack a thread to get Whites on the defensive saying; "I'm not a racist..." or "My family never owned slaves...." or my favorite "I have black friends...".

The idea is to induce as much White guilt as possible or to excuse any (and I mean ANY) black behavior. Thirteen year old black shoots pregnant White mother on the way to store? Video camera evidence, DNA and confession? Doesn't matter, the meme is to keep Whites in the dark and feeling Guilty.

"He is a Good Boy!""He is an Honor Student""He is an Athlete""He Fell in with the wrong crowd but he is turning his life around""The racist police are covering up the REAL evidence""Don't judge before all the facts are in"

And my favorite:

"You racist crackers are just as guilty of crimes! I bet you children are doing this every day but it is being covered up!"

Look at the Martin/Zimmerman shooting. Blatant, in your face manipulation of peoples emotions and drip, drip, drip of the facts that have exonerated Zimmerman, while the press and political parties have literally called for Zimmerman's Head.

There is one shill who has singlehandedly shut down all open discussion on the Doppelganger Identity & Research Society forum. Somehow, this person convinced most of the posters that celebrities didn't have doubles, that they were being killed by the CIA and replaced with look-alikes. Most of them, except for me (I'm not on there often) and a new member, bought into it. Now, that's the only idea (celebs being killed off by the CIA/Illuminati) that they will accept. I visited the forum a few days ago. It's closed to new members and one Moderator was kissing up to the shill. Very sad.

The illusion crashed to a halt in 1969 when I too realized Paul was gone. And I had met the phony Faul in 1968! I actually had a short conversation with him, but was thrown by how strange he looked. His features seemed 'off' and his voice peculiar, but it was the estrangement between he and John that struck the loudest note.

So my sage advice to all who cannot believe in the conspiracies, or deny the phony matrix we are manipulated to reside in.....try this - listen to your heart, sense in your gut what is real, and discern with clarity. The falsehood is out there to trip you up. Be aware and on your toes! Many have gone before us and are trying to warn you....LISTEN!

Did anyone mention that this new Paul released 23 albums = hundreds of songs, and they were mostly all shit! Like bob Zimmerman releasing a Christmas album and posing with Odummer receiving some on-stage award! What a joke, these idols.

I propose a re-invasion of the Doppelgänger Identity & Research Society. But since new members are not accepted & the shill is still there daily, I propose a new Doppelgänger forum, hopefully shill-proof.

Never expected two of my hobby horses, the anti-white establishment and PID, to collide under the topic of paid shills and a true confession to boot! I already knew this site is gold but this...

Thunderstrike is correct in what he says but most people never look at the motivations of subversives and just take them at face value and most white people are very naive like that.

As for the paid shill, he contradicts himself: he wonders aloud why the truth needs to be maniulated and shouldn't it stand on its own, then says he remains pro-Israel. It's almsot as if this "confession" is itself propaganda or at least a strategic backstep by the zionists to admit they have been found out but keep their "cause" noble and truthseeker-friendly. How cynical.

Another poster mentions a wesbite that has been hijacked. Yes, entire websites can be shills not just posters. Stay away from any "far-right" websites they are total shills. That is not easy knowing that these places have truth and news you won't get elsewhere but that's how they lure you in. They are definitely cointel.

I enjoyed the interpetation of Penny Laine and it's beyond what I was capable of doing. Very impressive. I was already familiar with Tina's work and ideas before finding this blog and it does you credit as I am now more convinced by your theory than I was on YouTube etc.

What impressed me is that you don't hang everything on the car crash and acknowledge the gun clues (not the ones referring to John's future murder) and the "accident at sea" (Octopus Garden etc). Seems like you have successfully tied them in together and if so, how awful the truth is. I may have more sympathy for the other Beatles now if they were forced by the Establishent to continue and be forced to make Sgt Pepper knowing that same establishment murdered Paul.

ATS is most likely some sort of intelligence operation. Of course, they are not going to want people to think there are *really* shills out there. "Thread is close and hoaxed" > very strange English construction... And of course, they can claim whatever they want in a "private exchange." Many good researchers have been run off of ATS b/c ATS does not actually want the Truth to come out.